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I must confess that for part of my healing journey – no, wait, let’s be honest, pretty much all of it so far – I have been somewhat of an unwilling participant. I have been in and out of therapy more times than I can count over the past decade and each time, I go in with the idea that “I’ll just sort out this one abuse-related issue that’s been bothering me and then I’ll get back to my real life”. I just want the pain to be over with already. I’m like the kid in the backseat of a car on a long road trip, endlessly asking “are we there yet?”

The first time I went to see a therapist, I told her a summary of the problems I was experiencing, and she told me she didn’t expect I’d be seeing her for longer than ten months to a year. “Great!” I thought. “If I have to do it, then I’m gonna kick this healing crap’s ass. I’ll go at it like a maniac, and at the end of the year I’ll be a completely different, much happier person. My life = sorted.”

So, for a year, I went at it like I was building Noah’s ark and the flood was due in three months. (Which is probably quite an accurate analogy; now I come to think about it.) I went to three-hour therapy sessions every two weeks. I cried. I screamed. I wrote unsent letters and burnt them ceremoniously. I bought a punching bag and beat the crap out of it on a regular basis. I journalled. I meditated. I lit candles. I drew. I fell asleep to relaxation CDs. I bought and devoured every book on healing and self-development I could get my hands on. I pretty much LIVED therapy. The only other things I was doing (somewhat sporadically) were a) going to work, b) eating and c) sleeping.

Ten months to a year came and went. I was still in therapy.

Two years came and went. I was STILL in therapy. What the?!

Three years came and went.

It seemed that neither I, nor my therapist at the time, had accurately guessed how deep the rabbit hole went. I was still uncovering buried memories of trauma, and what’s more, they seemed to be getting worse and worse as I became more skilled in dealing with them. It was almost like I was levelling up in some horrific computer game I didn’t recall purchasing but was now stuck playing against my will.

And I was getting tired. I finally thought, “Sod this, I’ve had enough therapy”. I quit, moved interstate, and took a job that allowed me to be close to nature. Externally, life was better for a short while. Internally, though, I didn’t feel much better.

As it happened, the game was far from over.

That summer I had my first flashback. Then I had my first panic attack. I realised in one horrifying instant the truth I had known all along but had previously been unable to face: that my father had sexually abused me. My father, whom I had always idealised and placed on a pedestal from a young age. I thought he was so smart, kind, wise and caring. No. I didn’t want to believe what my body was telling me. No. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

Therapy was supposed to improve my life. Not blow it up.

But in the end, that’s what it did.

All of the stories I believed about my happy childhood, where I was loved and had a normal, healthy family, were false. I had made them all up. They were a fiction I told myself so that part of me could remain innocent and survive.

I felt like I had taken the red pill and woken up on the other side of the Matrix.

This was NOT what was supposed to happen.

Damn therapy. I wanted a refund.

Four years came and went.

Now therapy was different. Now I had been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I was getting flashbacks all the time, and learning in therapy how to deal with them; grounding techniques, comforting myself, imagining figures protecting my child self from harm. All the while I was thinking, this is nuts. None of this actually happened. What the hell is wrong with me?! Reading literature on PTSD, trying to convince myself I wasn’t actually going crazy even though that’s what it felt like. Coping with that weird involuntary trembling and body shaking that occurs after a flashback. “There was a study done on deer who have been traumatised. They shake and tremble in order to recover,” my therapist told me. “Your body is just doing the same thing.”

But I didn’t want to be a traumatised deer. I wanted to be a completely normal happy average human being, who could get by just fine without therapy, thank you very much. I didn’t want any of this to be happening.

Five years came and went.

The denial lifted, and I finally began to believe what the flashbacks were telling me. I cut both my parents out of my life, and felt a huge sense of inner relief and peace. I decided to quit therapy, again, as the flashbacks were settling, and in any case, I now knew how to deal with them when they arose. By that time I had an army of self-nurturing tools at my disposal from journalling, drawing, posting on isurvive, to calling friends, etc. I had a lot of support around me. I had lost two abusive parents but somehow, amazingly, managed to escape the cycle of abuse and heal. I felt incredibly lucky.

I took a couple of years off from therapy and tried to just get on with my life. For the first time ever, I felt young and happy and free. For the most part. Memories of the abuse would crop up from time to time, but I would deal with them as they arose. I started to believe I had “made it”, I had reached the mythical end to healing that I had hoped for so long ago. Life was better. I felt a deep sense of peace at having finally accepted and believed the truth.

Which brings me to the present.

Now, there is a new memory knocking at my door. Frick. Just when I thought I was done.

It has been coming back in bits and pieces over the past year.

Now, the Game is back on. And boy oh boy have I levelled up now. It is a new and improved sequel with dramatically better special effects, surround sound and more vibrant 3D characters. This memory is far worse than any of the previous ones, and they were terrifying enough to start with. This one is more violent, more horrific, and just plain bizarre to boot. I can’t get it out of my head, and like some kind of debt collector from the past it won’t leave me alone. It keeps sending me letters with big red writing on the front and increasing the interest I owe on my payment. If I don’t deal with it soon it’s gonna come knocking at my door, empty my bank account and cart me away to the law enforcement agencies.

And so begins the sixth year.

But I feel better now. To be honest; by now I feel like a warrior. I have been through a lot the past nine years, and I’ve learned a lot as well. I know that, no matter how painful they are, feelings eventually always pass. I am, finally, learning the importance of nurturing and being kind to myself. I know that I have people I can call and the support of those at isurvive to help me get through the dark places. I know that my mind will not show me anything before I am ready to deal with it. And I know that whatever trauma I’m about to face, I’ve already lived through it, survived and am safe in the present.

I still don’t know when, or if, this healing process ever ends. I don’t know how much more pain I’ve repressed and buried in my unconscious that still needs to come out. If there is a “there”, I’m definitely not there yet. But I’m a lot further along in my journey. I’ve reclaimed so much of myself during this process. I feel a million times better and more whole than I did when I first started therapy all those years ago.

It didn’t feel okay to start with. It felt scary and I just wanted to run away. I feel just as scared now, going into my sixth year. But I think maybe therapy always feels that way in the beginning. Maybe that’s how you know you’re learning, growing, changing, getting out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself. Maybe anything meaningful or worthwhile is scary at first. Maybe life itself is more about growing, changing, and learning how to love ourselves, than it is about racing through or avoiding pain to get to a happier place faster. Maybe there is no mythical happy “there”. Maybe I can just try to be the best me possible while I’m “here”, instead.

I am continuously in awe of all the brave souls who find their way to this website. The members here have endured atrocities beyond belief, experienced the very worst of human nature. Many of their stories have moved me to tears. Stories of heartlessness, cruelty and devastating betrayal, often at the hands of family members entrusted to care for them – parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings. Stories of secondary betrayals as adult survivors speaking their truth to families who, in the majority of cases, refuse to hear, refuse to see, would rather risk losing their child than take responsibility for their crimes.

It is no wonder survivors of child abuse can be fearful of, or find it difficult to trust people. We humans can, and do, truly horrible things to each other. When the world has repeatedly taught you that trusting others leads to pain, why on earth would you want to continue doing so? Why wouldn’t you just give up, hide from others, not try anymore? When connecting with others feels so dangerous it brings on panic attacks if someone gets remotely close to you, where’s the incentive to keep trying?

If you’re a survivor of child abuse, you may not believe that you’re very brave. Should you be called, your answer may involve something along these lines:

“Me? Brave?! I’m not brave. Are you kidding? I’m terrified all the freaking time, of everyone and everything. I don’t want to come out of my house. I don’t trust anyone. I hate dealing with people. I get scared going to the corner shop sometimes, for heaven’s sake, in case someone talks to me. Every now and then I want to shut myself away in my room forever and never come out. I’m the last person on earth someone would ever call brave.”

I’m here to tell you, in the kindest possible way, that you’re wrong.

In fact, I would hazard a guess that, even if you don’t feel it, you are much braver than you give yourself credit for.

For starters, you are alive. As a child you survived the abuse, and you are choosing to remain alive now, even though you may be in a hell of a lot of emotional pain. You don’t know when or how this pain will end, yet you are still choosing to be here. That in itself is pretty huge.

Moreover, you are visiting isurvive and reading this blog post. Which probably means you are searching for answers, comfort, reassurance, hope, and support. The fact you are searching for these things means that part of you refuses to give up hope they are possible to find.

Given your past experiences, your willingness to keep trying is nothing short of incredible.

I sincerely hope you can believe that.

You see, some people may not understand how things like opening up to a new friend could be so scary. They would scoff, or laugh, or say “for heaven’s sake, just do it. It’s not that hard.”

They’re right. It’s not that hard. For them.

That doesn’t mean it’s not that hard for everyone.

People who don’t understand the fear you may feel are likely coming from a different, separate context to you. Perhaps they have not experienced as much trauma, hence their worldview is different; they view the world as a safe place and feel little fear of others. But courage is relative. It is not present where there is no fear, but rather, in those instances where fear must be overcome.

Give yourself more credit. If, for example, you happen to be terrified of people, and you then go and join a book club or meetup group with the specific aim of making new friends; that, in my eyes, is far more of an achievement than someone who has no fear of people doing the same thing.

Why? Because you had to jump over a lot of scary extra hurdles to get to that same point. If that makes sense. Once bitten, twice shy.

The fact that you are here, hoping for something better, wanting to believe in the goodness of people and the possibility of connection; looking for help, reaching out, perhaps sharing your story with others when past experience has taught you that you have no reason to trust anyone or believe things could be different in future…. that right there, my friends, is bravery. That is resilience, hope, and sheer determination. That is your abusers failing to crush your spirit. That is you refusing to let your pain consume you. That is your determination to live a life of your choosing, free of the chains of your past.

Have you been trawling Google lately, searching for terms like “abuse”, “narcissism”, “co-dependency” and “the rights of children”? Do you have an enormous thirst for knowledge of all things abuse-related? Do you scroll through pages and pages of web data, drinking in information like it’s clean water and you’re lost in the Sahara Desert? But no matter how much you consume, it never seems like enough? You’re up to page 10 of the search results already. Who goes to page 10 of the search results, for anything? Who even goes past page 1, for that matter?!

Who? People who want to do a thorough freaking job, that’s who.

The search for validation can become a compulsion. If web information on abuse were crack, you may now be considered an addict. You can’t help it. No matter how much you take in, it all seems to leak back out the next day. The waves of knowledge consumed are not strong enough to hold up to all those internal voices yelling at you that you’re wrong, that you’re making it all up, that your family was normal, that your parents loved you. Just shut up, they keep saying, stop creating drama and whining about nothing. You’re just as useless and stupid as they always thought.

But here’s the thing:

Maybe you’re not wrong.

Maybe this compulsion you’re developing is coming from somewhere. Perhaps this overwhelming need to understand is your brain trying to process and comprehend patterns in your life that do not otherwise make sense in any logical manner. Maybe this compulsion reflects your suspicion that there is another explanation for why you’ve been feeling so crap than that there’s something wrong with you, as those internal voices would have you believe.

The fact is: whatever part of you is searching hungrily online for information, help and alternative answers deserves support. To continue my starving-in-the-desert analogy (it seems apt so I’m running with it), in the early phases of abuse recovery that part is like a baby plant trying to take root – it needs a whole lot of sunshine and nutrients and probably a little water to help it along. If you are at this website because you were abused as a child, that plant is going to be fighting years of negative conditioning that could easily kill it off before it has a chance to grow. There is a heck of a lot of brainwashing that goes on during abuse. This needs to be inspected, seen for what it is and then dismantled in order to reduce its power.

Abusers always seek to offload responsibility for their actions onto their victims. They may say things like, “look what you made me do. If only you weren’t so stupid/worthless/attractive etc, this would never have happened.” Abusers often promote and encourage the idea that they abuse because of fundamental characteristics inherent within their victims, thus absolving themselves of all accountability. When viewed logically, this idea is blatantly ridiculous. In no way is anyone forced to treat Fred badly because Fred has red hair or sees himself as worthless. But in the absence of alternative support and information, and particularly when told to children by those in positions of authority, such lies may take root causing horrific and sometimes lifelong consequences.

So if you find yourself hungry for information, support, and awareness of abuse and what constitutes abuse; if you are Googling pages and soaking up information like there is no tomorrow: please be very gentle with yourself. At a deep level, you are likely fighting to break patterns that may have taken years to establish. You are analysing, reinterpreting and redefining your life’s events, piece by piece. This is no easy task. Your need for validation, support and accurate information is real, understandable, and deserves to be honoured.